Originated in Japan in distinctive chronological order, ACG culture, a blend of animations, comics, and games, have been developing, evolving and even has been industrialized today. However, such a process has not been by any means rapid steady growth, as several economic and social incidents have profoundly impacted such development embedded in Japanese contemporary culture. The aim of this paper is to analyze the correlation between ACG culture and Japanese society.
Part I. Origins of ACG culture and its development before 1945
The term manga came from an artist named Katsushika Hokusai, who lived during the Edo Period. He created this term by combining the word “man”(whimsical) with “ga” (pictures). Though the history of Japanese paintings could be traced back to the 12th century, some scholars believe that the beginning of modern manga could be dated back to the 18th century, on a type of Japanese book called Kibyōshi. Such a work of art includes illustration and texts besides so as to clarity. However, other scholars argue that it first existed during the Taishō period (1912–1926); some girls’ manga magazines of that era commonly depicted people with exaggerated eye size, which is a symbol only seen in modern mangas. One well-known counterpart, Shōnen Sekai(Boy’s World) was founded in 1895, which targeted teenage boys and soon gained popularity in the mainstream. Due to the fact that compulsory unisex education for elementary schoolers was established in the 19th century and steady population growth since the second industrial revolution, such magazines could gain more audience eventually and maintain their operation cycle; some of them were even considered as the pioneers of published mangas of the late Showa Period.
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The very first anime(an abbreviated version of “animation” in Japanese) also appeared during the economically blooming period in 1917. Probably Inherited from the older version that dealt with a string of moving celluloid, this art form maintained the advantage of designing moving patterns while reducing the cost of drawing every scene. Since then, many works of manga and anime mushroomed until the end of the Taishō period.
Unfortunately, the stagnation of anime and manga production started after Japan entered the Shōwa period. With the spread of militarism, the government focused on the aggression of neighboring nations. In order to maintain a relatively stable environment, officials started to exert restrictions on thoughts, resulting in wide censorship on publications. Some comics were regarded as frivolous, while some anti-war works were removed from the shelves. Many renowned authors were persecuted for “rebelling against the government”, while others drew propaganda mangas to promote Japanese military actions. During the Second World War, most works of art focused on the glory of Japanese soldiers or encouraged their people to work closely with the military. One manga called Norakuno would be a perfect example; the author initially designed this dog-like character to create and represent humorous and even sarcastic scenes that occurred when he served as a soldier. However, after a short period, it turned into war propaganda series that reflected the Sino-Japanese War, until it ceased publishing in the year of 1941. Nevertheless, the war chariot of Japan wouldn’t stop until the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even though it had been constantly encountering crushes since the Battle of Midway. While most people believe those bombs brought irrecoverable scars to the whole nation, it might, according to some scholars, promoted manga and anime industry because the Japanese people needed comfort from their own artworks so they could restore their nation and also alleviate them from the traumatic experiences; the widely known concept called Kawaii thus(cute) came in public. On September 2nd, 1945, the Second World War ended, leaving Japan in debris; however, several core industries, such as aviation(Mitsubishi) and some light industry companies(Yamaha), had a narrow escape from sanctions and would contribute to the economic boost in the future.
Part II. Post-War Japanese society and ACG developments, 1945-1972
After the war ended, the Allied Power conducted a 7-year occupation of Japan, aiming to remove the militarist forces lucking inside, as well as any potential threats; a new constitution, designed especially for a more democratic government, replaced the Meiji Constitution. From there, Japanese people gradually attempted to rebuild their nation from debris. Moreover, the government liberated all publications from any type of censorship to establish a more liberal political entity. That was also the dawn of the Japanese economic miracle; while some pre-war companies had a close escape from war trial sanctions, thus started to flourish and cooperate.
The anime producers and manga artists soon seized this economical and cultural opportunity and started to experiment with their personal styles. Their artwork reflected their needs to improve the society and break through stereotypes and past regulations, a common will of the whole society. Osamu Tezuka, both a manga and anime artist, took the lead during this special period. One of the most famous characters he created would be the Astro Boy, a humanoid robot resembling a little boy. Beyond just depicting the character, he predicted the future technological development of Japanese society and talked about the ethnicity of robots replacing human beings. Such profound story soon captured public attention, who were expecting a growing industrialized nation with well-established ethnics. Also, Tezuka helped shape the future of both anime and manga for the 'cinematographic' technique, which helped the future industrialization of both art forms: instead of drawing some rectangular panel covering the whole page, the manga artists could design each panel in different shapes to cater to their scenes; moreover, they could become “directors” by designing the shape and allocation of panels and storylines, while the hired assistant would paint for all panels. After publication, the main manga artist's name would be recognized as the ”real” author. Though most manga artists initially disagreed with this, they would soon find it helpful to implement this less time-consuming idea and adapted to this special technique. More importantly, he broadcasted each clip of story in 30 minutes, setting the standard time period for anime release for future industries.
At the same timespan, Nintendo, a future multinational game company, got its name and expanded on card manufacturing by negotiating with American companies like Disney to print out its characters. However, it soon realized that card manufacturing shouldn’t be the major industry of the company, as the world’s largest card-manufacturing company could only hold a tiny office consisting of nearly no furnitures. Hiroshi Yamauchi, who took over his grandfather’s company, probably wouldn’t realize that twenty years later, it would step out card manufacturing and start to design arcade games.
With the recovery of the native economy, the Japanese government also took action by joining the GATT, the IMF, and the OECD in this period. Moreover, the success of the 1964 Olympic Games and Expo ‘70 incremented the global impact of Japanese culture; this potentially led to future globalization in international trade and interactions, so did ACG cultures. Soon after 1972, the high-increasing stage of the Japanese economy ended and went on to the steady growth stage.
Part III. Steady Growth Period, 1973-1992
Japanese economy soon stopped the rapid increase after the 1973 oil crisis, and suffered from the stagflation that followed; instead of taking whole damage, however, the rapidly-growing economy only stopped accelerating, transiting to the so-called “steady growth period.” It was probably because of the spread of education, population growth, and development of technology that helped prevent the worsening of this particular situation. Such development also gave full space for the further development of entertainment, nearly uncensored. That’s where manga and anime first went into public mainstream, more like a subculture. Shōnen and shojō(teenage boys and girls) manga magazine presses, mostly founded in the 1950s, gained popularity among teenagers after shutdown during the Shōwa period; some even recalled that those magazines acted as their topics of conversation after school. During the 1980s, manga magazines have been much blended into the cultural mainstream; some widely known works, such as Dragon Ball and Saint Seiya, all came from this specific period. Also, some game or technical companies imported new technologies to improve game machines, such as arcade games and computer-based game systems. Nintendo, for example, developed a system called Laser Clay Shooting System for leisure games. After Miyamoto Shigeru, the father of Super Mario joined Nintendo in 1977, he led the development of several publicly recognized games, such as the Legend of Zelda and Donkey Kong. With his strategy to design creative and imaginative games, the company soon dominated the domestic market, as well as in North America. Due to the emergent of ACG culture in the mainstream, a term called Otaku(which means formalize“you” in Japanese)also appeared as a term of ACG lovers. With those changes in the ACG industry and Japanese society, there was no doubt that, during this period, ACG industry developed concurrently with the Japanese industry.
However, due to the negligence of proper censorship, such as the censorship on the production of adult content, ACG culture faced serious criticism from the public: some criminal activities that took place during this specific period have unbreakable connections between adult content, or even child pornography (still not fully regulated in Japan now). Tsutomu Miyazaki, for instance, tortured and killed four young girls under the influence of child pornographic content, some of which are psychopathic mangas and animes. What’s worse, when the police investigated his house, they discovered loads of manga magazines with adult content. Soon after this incident broke out, the public immediately correlated the term “Otaku” with this serial killer, and gradually the concept of manga and anime disappeared from mainstream culture. Moreover, there were serious protests against the whole manga and anime industry, stating that those detrimental and “soul-corruptive” contents had caused such a demonic crime. Even up till now, many would prefer to believe that such a subculture could lead to high crime rate and should be eradicated from the public. This incident had brought a slump period in the ACG industry until the economic crisis of 1991.
Part III. The Lost Decade, 1991-2000
In late 1991, Japan’s asset price bubble collapsed; it consequently caused the economic crisis in Japan, and the whole society was wrapped up in depression. Because of that, most sociologists name this specific period as “the Lost Decade”. However, because of the Lipstick Effect, and probably the shift from the prior shocking incidents, the Japanese ACG industry did not collapse and remained stable at that specific period. Moreover, the genre of manga evolved from depicting more about everyday details to more adventure-based contents that stayed close to real-world issues, such as in Gundam(fighting with enormous robots) and Neon Genesis Evangelion(saving the post-catastrophic world with robots and special organizations). These animes and mangas are still regarded as masterpieces, probably due to their ability to console the depressed mind and encourage them to step out by creating “miracles”; also, it’s widely believed that such genres have been encouraging those in the Lost Generation to strive hard and find their ways out of the darkness. Moreover, anime as an industry also helped the growth of the Japanese economy after the bubble burst; after its birth in the 1980s, ACG in whole as an industry developed rapidly, even though some incidents aforementioned removed it from the mainstream and caused a slump period.
Moreover, when computer technology started to flourish, many DOS games emerged from the market. The aforementioned company called Koei seized this opportunity and focused on developing war-strategy games based on the history of Japan’s Sengoku Period and China’s Three Kingdoms Period. Those games, created from stories familiar to Japanese society, soon gained popularity and in turn, ensuring the company’s survival in those difficult times. At the same period, Nintendo grabbed the opportunity to not only innovate its game machines, but also develop a new series of games-- Pokémon, or pocket monsters. Featuring cute yet powerful monster, it soon received positive feedback in Japan and overseas market, and, as we all know, become one of Nintendo’s best sellers. In all, the Lost Generation actually stimulated the production in Japanese ACG industry, and prepared it for future blossoms after the millenium.
Part IV. the Contemporary Period, 2000-present
After the world entered millenium, the rapid evolvement of World Wide Web soon helped promote ACG culture overseas. Now, those previously defined as “Otaku” could communicate without leaving their rooms and looking for offline organizations. Internet chat bars on animes and mangas also started to mushroom; we could see that starting from 2004, many discussion groups on ACG culture started to come into sight around the world. Some existed as video-sharing sites, while others development resembled today’s Instagram and Facebook. Among them was Niconico Douga (Douga is a combination of manga and anime), which became the pioneer of Danmaku system, which allowed comments to appear concurrently with the videos. Such practice attracted many Otakus and soon extended to the neighboring nations. Moreover, because of the relative stability in economics and politics, the genre of newly-designed “mainstream” anime diversified: while some companies switched from producing adventure stories to more daily-based love stories, some old enthusiastic series still persist. Thus, the classification system of ACG works started to arise, so that the authorities could guarantee that suitable work will be presented to those who can deal with the contents inside.
Moreover, ACG culture has been fully industrialized--similar to movie design, anime requires collective work of all departments, such as character design, voice artists, as well as graphic designers. This process has even grown international, as some companies prefer to conduct outsourcing so that they could save more investments in improving graphic quality, captivating storylines, or simply saving investments. What’s more interesting, ACG finally blended as inseparable, both as an industry and as a subculture; probably because the flexibility of adaptations of each art type, converting from one art type to another would be much easier than independently making up some scripts. Many animes, such as Inuyasha(dog-like humanoid in ancient Japan) and Saint Seiya Hades Chapter, all came from their previously bestseller manga versions. Games, developed in parallel with computer science, enhanced graph, sound and better hardware such as keyboards and mouses. They gave better game experiences and allowed more smooth transitions between distinctive frames. Koei, for example, evolved from only developing strategy games to action games; with its specialty to “create” history in some storylines, a new game from Koei called Dynasty Warriors soon emerged from the market. The dark Souls series from Namco Bandai also won many game Otakus’ heart.
Part VI. conclusion
In conclusion, we would find out a strong correlation between Japanese society, from a social, economical, and cultural perspective. Economic development would help the development of ACG culture and industry; ACG industry would in turn restore the Japanese economy, with both encouragement from the artworks and substantial financial boosts. Moreover, ACG would promote the diversification of Japanese culture as long as reasonable censorship and a liberal environment would coexist. In the long run, ACG as both an industry and subculture might encounter challenges, but with its correlation with society, it would still flourish.
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